The Southwest Design Review Board will check in tonight on a strangely familiar West Seattle development.

As built in 1927

The project is at 3811 California Ave. W. The developer initially proposed tearing down the Charleston Court building to build an entirely new project. Then, partway through design review, Charleston Court was nominated for landmark status. The project went on hold for a year.

The landmark board voted in April against landmarking the 1927 building, designed by William Whiteley, clearing the way for demolition. (Original building shown above.)

But the developer is back with new plans that will give the neighbors deja vu.

What the developer wants

The new design (seen at left) proposes retaining the wings of the original building and the building’s courtyard.

The rear portion of the old building would be torn down, but the developer wants to use that brick to create a new building front between the wings.

Steven Butler and Paul Cesmat bought the building in 2007. Project architect is Nicholson Kovalchick.

Donovan Rypkema, the historic preservation and economic development expert, was here this week from Washington, D.C. for a lecture sponsored by Historic Seattle.

I went to his lecture Thursday and spoke to him Friday morning. He had been out with his camera, wandering First Hill and downtown and snapping photos of older blocks and newer developments. He said Seattle has really changed in the 20 years he’s been watching it.

“I’ve loved (Seattle) because of its grittiness and that’s rapidly disappearing,” he said.

He said he was also surprised we don’t have more historic districts in our great, historic town. Rypkema believes historic preservation is key to economic development but has a special affinity for historic districts. Unlike one historic building, where preservation can be seen as an economic burden on a building owner, he said, a district sees all its values rise.

He said rehabbing a historic building is the greenest construction there is and said there is no function in today’s world that couldn’t happily be housed in yesterday’s building. He said churches, universities and hospitals are the worst at claiming they need to raze historic buildings to suit their modern needs.

“Developers are often painted as the villains in neighborhoods but the biggest villains in neighborhoods are churches hospitals and universities,” he said Friday. “They screw up more neighborhoods than anyone else in the country.”

At the Thursday lecture at Wallingford’s lovely Good Shepherd Center, Rypkema said historic districts also: have stabler prices and are better equipped to ride out economic downturns, and draw better tourists and do a better job overall at supporting the local economy than new construction (because more money goes to workers than materials, and then the workers spend that cash locally).

(Quick, before you click the link above, name the architect. Hint: He also designed the old King County Courthouse.)

The Arctic Club Hotel will celebrate its grand opening in May, according to the Web site for Summit Hotels & Resorts. Summit bought the walrus-adorned historic building from the city in 2005 for $5.1 million. Check out a slide show of rooms and more here.

Summit has been busy converting the 1916 social club turned office building into an upscale hotel. The landmark building at Third and Cherry needed a full seismic upgrade in addition to repairs and refurbishments.

It’s been fun to see the building getting spruced up for its new purpose. Check out the room design here, and get a glimpse on the left of the refurbished ceiling and chandelier.

The building is no longer limited to those who made it big in the Alaskan Gold Rush, but rooms start at about $250 a night.

(Fun fact, from Jeffrey Ochsner‘s “Shaping Seattle Architecture:” The Arctic Building’s Architect, Augustus Warren Gould, had no academic training and transferred from the contracting business to architecture in the late 1890s.)

About this Blog

Welcome to the Daily Journal of Commerce's SeattleScape blog. This blog focuses on how Seattle shapes itself -- its design, its planning and its aspirations. We will talk about what we're building, what we're losing and what we're preserving.

Opinions expressed by bloggers are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.

About SeattleScape's Bloggers

Patrick Doherty is economic development director for the city of Federal Way. He previously worked for the city of Seattle in planning and development, including managing the Design Review Program from 1994 to 2001. Patrick chaired the Queen Anne/Magnolia/South Lake Union Design Review Board from 2006 to 2008. He lives on Queen Anne Hill, enjoys exploring the city and the greater Pacific Northwest, photography, foreign languages and national and international travel.

Matt Hays has loved Seattle since birth. He lives in Belltown, walks
nearly everywhere, and recently rediscovered bicycling. Matt is
slightly obsessed with issues like pedestrian safety, parks and
vibrant neighborhoods. He's read every DJC since high school. Since
1996 Matt has been the proposal writer at Lease Crutcher Lewis.

Darby Watson is an urban planner and designer for Arup. She previously worked for the City of Seattle managing the Complete Streets program for SDOT. She is a former Seattle Design Commissioner and former Chair of the Urban Design and Preservation Division of the American Planning Association. She developed her (sometimes) keen sense of urbanism riding metro from Magnolia to Franklin High School in her teenage years.

She recently relocated to San Francisco and hopes to share her design and planning discoveries from the City by the Bay as well as reminisce about her native habitat.

Walter Schacht, FAIA is the managing principal at Schacht Aslani Architects. He is recognized for creating strong, modern buildings that transform educational, cultural and civic institutions, and for promoting public policies that advance the architectural community. Walter is an appointed member of the AIA Seattle Public Policy Board, a gubernatorial appointee to the State's Capital Projects Advisory Board and is AIA Washington Council's representative to the Architects and Engineers Legislative Council.

Charles R. (Chuck) Wolfe, M.R.P., J.D. is an attorney in Seattle, where he focuses on land use and environmental law and permitting, including the use of innovative land use regulatory tools and sustainable development techniques on behalf of the private and public sectors and the successful redevelopment of infill properties under federal, state, and local regulatory regimes. He is also an Affiliate Associate Professor in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington, and contributes regularly on urban development topics for several publications including The Atlantic, The Atlantic Cities, Grist, The Huffington Post, seattlepi.com, and myurbanist.com. His upcoming book, Urbanism Without Effort (Island Press, 2013) will be available this Winter.

Nate Cormier, PLA, LEED AP is a Principal at SvR in Seattle. He earned a masters from Harvard University in landscape architecture, but spends a surprising amount of time with civil engineers. Nate is currently leading the design of Bell Street Park and the Yesler Terrace public realm. He is also a Lecturer at the University of Washington College of Built Environments, a Board Director of the Landscape Architecture Foundation and an Executive Council Member of the Green Seattle Partnership.

Roger Valdez is director of Smart Growth Seattle, a partnership promoting a fresh land use code to manage neighborhood growth. It collaborates with homebuilders and other stakeholders to help city government adopt codes that are appropriate for meeting housing demand and preserving neighborhood character.

Scott Surdyke is a development consultant who has lived in Seattle for 23 years. He is originally from Baltimore, where he witnessed the transformation of that city's waterfront. Scott has served on the Seattle Design Review Board (NW Sector), and is an advocate for waterfront and transit-oriented development . He travels frequently to other cities and tries to understand what works well there, and believes that learning from those successes can help Seattle as it faces the challenges of growth.

Jon Silver is a DJC reporter and special section editor who has been living in Seattle since 1998. He gained his street smarts growing up on the mean cul-de-sacs of a master-planned community in Omaha, Neb.

Lynn Porter is the architecture and engineering editor at the DJC. She previously covered real estate for the newspaper. Porter loves cities and the urban landscape despite having a sense of direction that gives her a 50-50 shot of going the wrong way when leaving any building.

She has her own ideas about zoning, transit, historic preservation and other issues involving Seattle, but thinks yours are probably more interesting. So please offer your comments, and if you have news tips, contact Porter at lynn.porter@djc.com or at (206) 622-8272.